From the outside it looks like any normal house, a cosy little dormer bungalow with a quaint little garden, greenhouse and garage.

However on the inside it is a hive of activity, as dedicated couple Kerry and Barry Last have turned their home into a hedgehog sanctuary.

It has its own little hospital area and a variety of boxes and rabbit hutches full of sickly and underweight hedgehogs, who all need some love and care over the winter.

The couple currently have 67 hedgehogs under their care at Charlie's Hedgehog Care in Holton - and have utterly devoted their lives to helping the prickly creatures, spending all hours of the day cleaning their cages, feeding them, taking them to vets and ensuring that they get the correct medication.

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The pair have never issued an appeal for help before, with Kerry's business Flirty Froxs having funded the sanctuary for the past six years, covering food costs, as well as veterinary bills, however now as they have seen a huge influx of hedgehogs under their care they felt that they have now been put in a position where they must ask for help.

One of the guests at Charlie's Hedgehog Care at Holton-le-Clay (Image: Jon Corken)

Kerry says that any donations no matter what size are welcomed, and since appealing for help on social media a couple of weeks ago, the response they have received from the general public has been "amazing."

Currently Charlie's Hedgehog Care uses 1.4KG of 'wet' cat and dog food a day to feed the animals, plus over another kilo of dried food, as they try to ensure that all of the hedgehogs in their care have enough to live on.

Kerry said: "In the six years that we have been running Charlie's Hedgehog Care we have never put an appeal out asking for help, as my other business has always been able to fund it.

"However recently we have been having to take care of more and more hedgehogs, and at the moment we have 67 hedgehogs in our care, and only seven are actually hibernating.

"We put an appeal out on social media a few weeks ago, and the response has been just amazing, with people coming in everyday looking to see if they are able to help us in some way."

The hedgehogs in their 'rooms' at Charlie's Hedgehog Care at Holton-le-Clay (Image: Jon Corken)

"We have poor and sickly hedgehogs coming in every single day, and there seems to be a real rise in underweight hedgehogs, which can be fatal at this time of year as they need to be 600g to survive hibernation."

Kerry and Barry have given up their whole home to hedgehogs, caring for them all over their home, the garage and are currently in the process of creating "Charlie's House" which will be a purpose built shelter that will allow the hedgehogs to have a safe and clean place to live.

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In order to help develop this shelter the couple are now raising funds in order to help provide some much needed work, and better living facilities for the prickly little fellows.

Kerry continued: "As we become more established in the area we have started to develop Charlie's House, which will be like a hospital for our most at risk hedgehogs, but in order to do that we need the correct facilities.

"At the moment we keep our hedgehogs in 64 litre plastic boxes and rabbit hutches, but these are not ideal, especially the hutches, because if anyone who has ever dealt with hedgehogs before will know how messy they can get.

"We have set our sites on some veterinary standard cages, made of a special plastic that is very easy to clean, meaning that we will be able to save time and hopefully some money in caring for the creatures, while also giving them somewhere nice to stay."